RELIGION-TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: Orisha Practice on the Move

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Aug 19 1999 (IPS) - Its followers insist it is not a religion, but a spiritual discipline whose philosophy has no concept of the devil as postulated by other faiths.

It has also been described as one of the most misunderstood practices, but as Trinidad and Tobago this week plays host to the Sixth World Congress, followers of the Orisha Tradition and Culture say they have much to cheer about.

In addition to staging the World Congress – the first time it is being held in the Caribbean – followers have been celebrating the recent decision by the Trinidad and Tobago parliament to recognise marriages conducted under the Orisha tradition.

Under the Orisha tradition, girls are allowed to marry at 15. Marriages are usually arranged by the parents of the couple.

Orisha is an African form practised by the Yoruba tribe in the southwestern region of Nigeria. Its activities include the offering of animals or vegetable life, food and drink and any other “object prescribed through divination” as sacrifice

The practice is also evidenced in other African countries like Togo, the Republic of Benin and in some other countries like the United States, Brazil and Cuba.

Cultural researcher and chairman of the central committee of the Orisha Movement of Trinidad and Tobago, Rudolph Eastman says Orisha is a “spiritual discipline” and not a religion.

“Remember different groups came here (during slavery) and they all had different ways of worshipping the Almighty,” he says, adding that the Orisha practice is gaining acceptance among Trinidadians than any other African religion.

“As an African-derived cultural form that one can identify with one’s past, many people accepted the Orisha practice or tradition for ideological as well as spiritual reasons, thereby helping to create a greater public visibility and social acceptance of the tradition,” he says.

Eastman says Orisha, just like the Spiritual Baptist movement identifies with oppression and even though the Baptist “which is Christian in orientation and believes in the Bible” there are African belief practices still encountered in their rituals.

But he points out that to link Orisha to the practice of witchcraft such as obeah is yet another example of the misunderstanding of the discipline.

“The word obeah comes from the Koromanti dialect which means witchcraft. To say that Orisha practice is witchcraft is to not only misunderstand, but misrepresent the practices of the faith,” he says.

Burton Sankeralli, a spokesman for the Sixth world Congress Secretariat says perhaps one reason for misunderstanding and misrepresenting the movement has to do with the African versus the Western culture.

“According to the dominant Eurocentric view a “religion” is a clearly demarcated, imposed and exclusive belief to which one either does or does not belong,” he says.

Such a religious system provides the “willing tools of oppression and control and readily fuel the present global environment of ethnic or group competition and conflict”.

Sankeralli says the African religious ethos “has subverted much of the dominant Western Christianity, rendering it African,” with Orisha tradition emerging as a “pivotal African religious pattern globally”.

The World Congress here has attracted delegates from many of the countries in which the movement has a following. It is being held under the theme “The Orisha, The Ancestors, Community and Family in the New Millennium-Strategies for Survival”.

Its most celebrated member, The Ooni of Ife, Okuande Sijuwade Olubuse 11 of Nigeria was forced to cancel his visit at the last moment due to matters of state, the organisers say.

“The globalisation of the faith is an important concern of the Congress,” says Sankeralli, noting that several websites could be found on the Internet.